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Abstract

Objective: To determine whether etomidate is associated with longer seizures than methohexital in ECT anesthesia. Methods: Retrospective chart review in 39 patients who were switched from one anesthetic to the other. We compared motor and EEG seizure duration in the last ECT session on one anesthetic and the first session on the other anesthetic. Results: Motor seizures were about 10 seconds longer with etomidate (p < 0.05). However, few of the increases in seizure duration had obvious clinical import. Conclusions: Etomidate can lengthen ECT seizure time compared with methohexital, but the clinical significance of this observation requires further study.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

KJB serves as an Academic Editor on the PeerJ Board.

Author Contributions

Kevin J Black conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper.

Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Washington University Human Subjects Committee, #93-0171

Grant Disclosures

The following grant information was disclosed by the authors:

National Institutes of Health, K08 NS001898

Funding

Preparation of the manuscript was supported in part by NIH grant K08 NS001898 and NARSAD (now the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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